Real estate markets really hit the hardest by Alison Rogers | @re_rookie | December 21, 2011 | + Tweet Getty Images When the real estate bubble burst – in 2006, 2007 or 2008, depending on where you were – there’s a good chance that the value of your home took a nose dive. But who got hit worst, the bottom of the market or the top? In an effort to answer that question, Clear Capital, an analysis and valuation firm in Truckee, California (near Lake Tahoe), analyzed the market in terms of "tiers." Take as a starting point the national market’s peak, that glorious, gold-hazy summer of 2006. At that point, any home that sold for less than $150,000 was in the bottom quarter of properties – what Clear Capital calls a “low-tier” home. Any home that sold for more than $395,000 was in the top quarter of properties – a “high-tier” home. The two others were in the middle – of course – "mid-tier." What Clear Capital found is that not all these tiers fell by the same amount. The average mid-tier home dropped in value by 41%, while homes in the low tier fell by 46.3%. Homes in the top tier, however, lost only 26.8% of their value since the crash. If you imagine a wedding cake with three uniform layers, what happened is that the bottom layer pancaked more than the other two. So is this another tale of the rich getting off relatively easy? Maybe not, according to Alex Villacorta, director of research and analysis at Clear Capital. "You might say that, in percentage terms, what happened in the top tier is easier to take," notes Villacorta. "But for people who are a bit strapped, it’s an absolute success of $106,000." The low tier, on the other hand, saw valuations suffer on average by $69,500. The average mid-tier home, for its part, dropped by $100,900. That’s the bad news. The good news is that, according to Villacorta, it looks like all levels of the market have adjusted to the large numbers of foreclosures and subsequent resale of those properties by banks. In other words, while your local market may not be great, it’s probably stable enough. And even if there’s another wave of foreclosures – which some analysts predict will happen in 2012 – prices are unlikely to reserve much. That relative stability is due largely to the rental market. Former homeowners still need somewhere to live, of course, and their demand for rentals has led to the recovery of those low-tier homes. Villacorta says investors have bought up vacant properties from banks and improved them for tenants. The result: the decline in home prices slowed during 2011. "In terms of welcome data from our index, we see stabilization at a national level," says Villacorta. "We’ve seen just a 1% drop in prices since January – and no change at all in the last six months." Retailers want a rematch in swipe fees - Romney edges Santorum in straw poll Ryan Braun, National League MVP, busted for PED use Outstumped and outspent, Newt Gingrich in Florida.